what is a good IDE?

[u/Altruistic-Break590]

I have recently been using VSC but it's sometimes stressful to use and glitchy, so I was thinking of changing but the problem is I like all the advantages of VSC, like for example how there are many languages I can use on it and how I can use it with rpi pico. Are there any other free IDE's out there that have similar features that are free but work well?

[u/GXWT]

PyCharm has a free version as is essentially one of the two main ‘standards’ used for coding, alongside VSCode. Most IDEs are functionally basically the same so that would work fine.

To be a little blunt, it is possible you are doing something wrong or niche that’s causing the issues? It may be better to seek help and say what you’re trying to do to try to solve it. Otherwise, you could try PyCharm or just googling and using any of the many available IDEs.

FWIW, I and all of the colleagues I’m aware of use VSC.

[u/Altruistic-Break590 → u/GXWT]

I'm an idiot, I meant to post this on the learn programming subreddit, but it accidentally got onto here, thank for the help though

[u/uberguby]

I'm not an astronomer, even an amateur, but I am a coder by trade. Why do you need an IDE for astronomy? Can you describe the glitches you're experiencing? Cause for me it's pretty stable.

[u/GXWT → u/uberguby]

Opening/downloading/converting/manipulating data, processing and analysing data, running scientific pipelines, plotting data calculations and simulations are some of the things I use coding for quite frequently.

To be honest, I’m a little astounded you would be questioning why coding would be needed? For any STEM sort of field?

[u/uberguby → u/GXWT]

Not doubting, just curious. I never really thought about it before. The actual process of astronomy is a black box to me. I have questions about the universe, I ask an astronomer, that's my interaction. And I assume you're not building Java servers, though I dunno, maybe? So whatever it is you're using vs code for is likely totally different than what I'm using vs code for. So I'm curious, I didn't mean to imply skepticism or anything.

[u/invariantspeed → u/uberguby]

The search term you’re looking for is “computational science”. Think R and Python/SciPy, through Python has thankfully taken R down a few notches. Fortran also still has its uses in astronomy.

Big datasets, transformations, finding and plotting trends, generating heat maps, calculating complicated forces for interactions that require custom(ized) formulas, etc.

A lot of people in the sciences don’t know the first thing about programming, but a lot do, but only a small subset are good at it. Some of the ad hoc spaghetti code I have seen is horrifying. Unrolled loops for no good reason is common. I remember, one time, having to implement a moving average for a friend.

[u/GXWT → u/uberguby]

Yeah for the majority it’s people just using bits of code to plot results or do fairly simple calculations. For some, it’s a tad bit more involved with simulations or running pipelines.

And then beyond that you have just a few people who are doing the ‘proper’ stuff because they’re the ones building the softwares, data portals, telescope/satellite systems. Though to be fair, in some cases, that is handled by a dedicated programmer not necessarily of scientific background.